Israel’s Attacks on Gaza Intensify, ABC News Admits Mistake

Relatives of al-Hajj family mourn as they gather in a mosque to pray over the bodies of the eight family members during their funeral in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip., SAID KHATIB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Israel’s air bombardment of the Gaza Strip continues to intensify, with over 800 strikes reported in three days, as part of what the Israeli Defense Forces (I.D.F.) dubbed Operation Protective Edge.

Meanwhile, rocket fire continued to rain on parts of Israel, with the country’s Iron Dome intercepting eight such attacks in the latest “major barrage,” reports Haaretz. Other rockets landed Thursday, without damage or casualties reported. In a three-day period, the Iron Dome shot down over 70 rockets.

Continued tensions between occupied Palestine and Israel again erupted into broader violence in the wake of the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, which was followed by the revenge killing of a Palestinian teen living in East Jerusalem. A number of Palestinians were also killed during Israel’s search for the missing teens.

According to Gaza Health Ministry numbers reported by Haaretz, 81 Palestinians have been killed since the operation’s start, with 537 wounded. Twenty-two of the deceased have been children. (The Washington Post on Wednesday named 13 Gazan children who had been killed during the attacks.)

One air strike killed eight non-combatant members of the Kaware family in what the I.D.F. called unintentional casualties. Odeh Kaware, a Hamas commander, was said to live in the home. As it often does, the I.D.F. phoned other residents in the house to warn them of an imminent bombing, and then fired a “knock on the door,” less-lethal missile as a final warning. According to Haaretz, the family then returned to the home, “just as the larger missile, meant to destroy the home, was fired.” The Israeli Air Force said it would continue striking the private homes of Hamas commanders.

According to the Associated Press, at least eight others were killed while watching a World Cup game at a crowded beach cafe in Gaza. The I.D.F., which said it was investigating the incident, accused Hamas of exposing Palestinians to Israeli attacks by operating “within houses and streets and neighborhoods which are populated with civilians.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a Thursday meeting that a cease-fire is “not even on the agenda right now,” and vowed to further intensify the air raids in the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu did, however, resist requests from some Israeli officials to cut off water and electricity to the area.

ABC News has apologized for a mistake that occurred during its Tuesday night episode, during which Diane Sawyer misidentified a photo of a Gaza Strip family reeling from an I.D.F. air raid as an Israeli family suffering from Palestinian attacks.

In a statement on the program’s Facebook page, the network said it “[regrets] the error and will correct it”—but not before Twitter users started #TweetLikeABC. In over 4,500 tweets, users mockingly misidentified photos from movies as war footage, and reversed the facts in famous cases such as the Rodney King beating and U.S. nuclear attacks on Japan.